1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a novel apparatus, system and method of growing soilless sod. More particularly, the present invention utilizes trays for growing sod without soil wherein the trays are easily stackable, movable, and contoured with shapes such that roots may grow downward around the proximal surface of the shapes to promote interwoven root structure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Growing soil-free sod has been pursued for many years, and with many implementations, however, there remain significant limitations to current methods of growing soil-free sod.
Conventional sod growing methods typically consist of planting sod in soil. Limitations with this approach require the scraping off of the top layer of soil upon harvesting. In doing so, the soil often requires injections of additional nutrients for subsequent crops, resulting in environmental pollution issues. Additionally, to expedite the harvesting of the sod, plastic webbing is often integrated in with the growing of the sod, which results in long-term, unattractive, and environmentally damaging plastic that remains in the sod for many years to come. Sod harvesting typically occurs at nearly one year after planting, therefore requiring expansive land areas to grow such sod. Because of such a large land area that is required, sod farms are often located at a distance from where the sod is ultimately sold or laid. The process of harvesting, transporting, and planting the sod requires expensive equipment, is messy, labor intensive, and inefficient. Due to the way that conventional sod is harvested, much of the root structure is damaged and results in the harvested sod often dying or being shocked, taking it significantly longer to regain its healthy, vibrant look. Because of these and the many other limitations of conventional sod growing and harvesting methods, the introduction of soil-free sod growing has been pursued.
Current approaches of growing soil-free sod consist of growing the sod on plastic sheeting, rubber mats, concrete, or other hardened and/or impermeable surfaces. In such cases, a growing medium (such as various sources or types of cellulosic material mixed with various nutrients) is placed over the hardened or impervious surface, which has the sod grass source mixed in (seeds, sprigs, stalons, plugs, etc), is watered, and the sod germinates and/or grows. The result of growing soil-free sod produces a product that it is faster, lighter, stronger, healthier, more environmentally friendly, and more cost-effective to grow than conventional growing methods. There are many advantages of growing soil-less sod, but there also remain practical challenges, which need to be overcome to make it practically implemented on a broad scale.
When the growing medium is spread over a broad surface, it becomes susceptible to various weather conditions, which can quickly destroy a crop. For instance, wind and rain both pose significant challenges to soilless sod during the early part of the growing cycle. Wind can blow away the growing medium. Once the root structure begins to form within the growing medium as a laterally interwoven root system, creating a large flat mat-like structure, wind can catch under its edge, and lift large sections of the mat-like structure, destroying the sod. Rain can also wash away sections of the growing medium. With typical soilless sod growing techniques, a large area of surface is covered by the growing medium, but upon heavy rain, and the channeling effects of runoff, the growing medium can easily become washed away. Keeping the germinating seeds or grass at a preferred moisture level can be challenging too. The wet/dry cycle of the growing medium can be challenging to control. Because the growing medium is typically relatively thin, it can quickly dry out and kill the newly germinated seeds.
The growing surface itself can also be largely effected by environmental factors. Plastic sheeting has been used to grow soilless sod, but due to the Bernoulli's effect, amongst other conditions, the surface can be lifted by wind. Even staking down the plastic sheeting has numerous challenges to growing, and harvesting, as it fails to fully eliminate section lifting of the material, and introduces challenges for harvesting, as the sheeting can be fragile. Other methods, such as growing on stabilized soil, offers their own set of environmental and cost challenges. These surfaces can wear down over time, can be difficult to apply evenly over a broad area, and do not eliminate the wind or rain issues.
Flatt, et al, describes a method of growing soilless sod on a polymer-based surface. Such an application overcomes several of the challenges of alternative soilless sod growing methods, namely by reducing cost of preparing the surface compared to concrete, increasing the durability and practicality over plastic sheeting, and offering the many advantages previously discussed over conventional soil-based growing of sod. However, environmental issues such as wind and rain still pose a challenge to this approach.
Prior art may be Egan (PN 6334275) that describes a method of providing preparing sports surfaces using transportable turf grass. Edan (PN 5651213) describes the production of sod using a soilless sand based root medium. Decker (PN 5481827) describes a method for manufacturing sod. Strombom (PN 5860246) describes a sod mat for establishing plants. Clark (PN 5765304) describes a turf-growing process. Holloway (PN 6446386) describes a seed germination medium. Huh (PN 6389745) describes a sheet for growing grass seeds and grass seed mat using the same. Baldwin, et al, (PN 6357176) describes a soilless sod method. Stevens (PN 6324781) describes a mulch or seed mat. Morgan (PN 6293045) describes a biodegradable mulch mat. Each of the above fail to fully meet the needs of growing soilless sod on a large scale, and meeting the practicalities of production.